About Cathy Read
Contemporary artist Cathy Read creates Colourful paintings of urban landscapes that reflect city life in all it's glory. Born in Middleton, Lancashire, as a child, Cathy's mother took her to Manchester City Art Gallery where she was inspired by the Ford Maddox Brown painting "Work" inspired a passion to create art.

Persuaded to pursue a “Real career” she moved to Oxford to obtain a Diploma in Occupational Therapy. Later, she used art to develop fine motor skills in children when working as an occupational therapist in Bedford. Subsequently, she had a private OT practice from 1996-2006.

Realising the artist dream remained during a career break, she decided to do it now or regret it. Since then, Cathy has tenaciously built her career, learning on the job. Her distinctive style developed from early, predominantly circle based abstracts into urban landscapes, fuelled by a lifelong interest in buildings and rooted in a childhood dominated by the giant cotton mills of Middleton.

Cathy exhibits around the UK, Europe, and is collected as far afield as Canada, Africa, and New Zealand. In 2021 she was selected for the 20th international Art Exchange Exhibition in Chiba, Japan. Cathy regularly exhibits with the Society of Women Artists in London, being awarded the Barbara Tate Memorial Award in 2015. Her work is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and various corporate collections, including Wetherspoons at Victoria Station and Bahlsen . She appeared on Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year in 2016 and 2017.

Cathy lives in a chapel near Buckingham, which she converted with her husband. It is close enough to London to get an Urban Architecture fix when needed. Cathy splatters paint and sings loudly in her Buckinghamshire Studio, when not steering a canal boat along the British waterways and wielding a windlass.